“How far out are you?”
“Depending on what snacks Lexie hauls back to the Charger, we could be there in a coupla hours, we could be there next week.”
“Good news,” Tate muttered through a distracted chuckle.
“The reason you’re callin’,” Walker prompted, moving to the gas cap.
“Right, how much time we got before she comes back?”
“We’re in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere but still, she’s in a building where there’s shit to buy so probably a lot,” Walker answered as he jerked the nozzle out of the gas pump and fed it into the car.
“Didn’t know you’d be home so soon so this could wait but while I got you, might as well give you what I got.”
Walker pressed the buttons on the pump, got the zeroes on the display then pulled up the handle and set the lever. Then he turned his back to the car and leaned into it, scanning the area, finding the SUV, clocking the driver, clocking that he knew the driver and controlling his blood pressure when he saw who it was while saying, “Talk to me.”
“Last coupla days, got a lot of info on Alexa Berry.”
“Walker,” he corrected automatically.
Silence then through an obvious smile, “Walker.” Then, quietly, “Congratulations, man.”
“You sayin’ that means the shit you got isn’t shit that’s gonna suck,” Walker noted.
“Opposite in regards to Lexie.”
Walker bent his neck, studied the toes of his boots and listened.
Jackson spoke. “She’s got a juvie file. Considering her history, not surprising. Nothin’ big. Vandalism. Disturbing the peace. A couple of times picked up for shoplifting. Started when she was around twelve, ended abruptly when she was fourteen.”
Around the time Ella Rodriguez entered Lexie’s life and gave his wife her first taste of having a motherly-type woman who gave a shit.
“Right,” he muttered.
Tate went on, “Found out what happened after the Granddad died, home for girls then foster care.”
Walker knew that so he didn’t respond.
He heard Jackson take in a breath. Then he asked cautiously, “You remember that ballplayer Ronnie Rodriguez?”
“I know about Rodriguez,” Walker told him as he heard the lever disengage, he yanked out the nozzle and shoved it back into the pump.
More caution with, “Lexie forthcoming about his chosen profession?”
“Pimp. Drug dealer. Occupational status changed when he took seven, two to the face.”
“She was forthcoming,” Tate muttered. “The news I got for you, and it surprised the fuck outta me, I got a call from a vice cop, Dallas PD. Don’t know this guy, didn’t ask for the call. He heard I was snoopin’ and he called me wonderin’ why.”
Walker felt that barbed sensation at the back of his neck and his eyes went back to his boots but he didn’t see them. He was focused on Tate.
“What’d you tell him?” he asked.
“The truth,” Jackson answered. “That she married a good friend of mine, that friend had been jacked in the past and I was taking his back.”
“You give this cop a name?”
“No, considering his interest in your new wife.”
The barbs pressed in.
“What’s this fucker’s name?”
“Detective Pe?a. Angel Pe?a.”
Fuck.
“You get a bad feeling about this guy?” Walker asked.
“No, but she’s not my wife. She was then fuck yeah.”
Fuck.
Walker looked from his boots to the horizon still not seeing anything and he shared quietly, “She hasn’t mentioned him.”
“Reckon she wouldn’t. Don’t think he’s on her radar. But she sure as fuck’s on his. He’s taken an interest in Alexa Berry now Walker. The good news is, this was a natural progression seeing as he had an interest in Rodriguez before he caught sight of your wife.”
“Explain,” Walker rumbled.
“He had a lot to say about Rodriguez. Gotta tell you man, heard about her association with him, wasn’t pleased to hear those two were paired and you were in Vegas marrying her. That was until Pe?a called and gave me the full brief on Lexie, who, by the way, he’s surprised as fuck to find out is in Vegas gettin’ hitched.”
Walker didn’t like that. Not at all. Some vice cop who knows Lexie enough to be surprised. Some vice cop who hears someone asking around and gives a shit enough to pick up the phone.
He didn’t fucking like it at all.
Tate continued, “He liked Rodriguez. Had a lot to say about him and a lot of what he said was good.”